Don't call it a come back

I knew I was going to be writing a bunch tonight so I decided to get some fuel.

I mentioned the other day that we went to see Blade Runner 2049 and that I loved it.

I’m going to leave it to every film blog and people way smarter than me to actually write about the movie but I’m going to write a few thoughts I had about sequels in general.

Blade Runner 2049 is one of those insanely rare movies that is a sequel that makes the original a better movie. Don’t get me wrong, the 1982 is a classic, it was the inspiration for decades worth of sci-fi and is still referenced visually it so many things today. What Ridley Scott and his team were able to do, adapting an already twenty year old short story into a brooding, gritty and dripping with style noir tale should never be forgotten, but I think Denis Villleneuve has retroactively added such a deeper and more emotional twist to the story.

Off the top of my head the only films where this is also the case are the first two Terminator movies. These two fantastic flicks are very different from each other; one is a low budget, intimate horror/chase movie and the sequel is a balls to the wall action epic. But they capture that same feeling of importance to each other.

We’ve had a lot of revival sequels in the last few years, ‘legacy sequels’ is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Films that are basically reboots of the original but honour whats come before and include characters and stories from the original. Perfect examples are Creed, Tron Legacy, The Force Awakens and Jurassic World are prime examples of this formula. Hell, the Terminator franchise had been run through the mud so much they didn’t even really try and disguise they’re attempt at it with Genisys… thankfully that film tanked so hard they decided to not continue down that road.

There are plenty of films that follow this pattern that end up being great! I loved The Force Awakens and believe it was exactly what was needed for that franchise at the time, but you can’t look at it and not see many many elements that have been adapted from previous Star Wars films.

I think thats what made Blade Runner 2049 so special. It was absolutely a sequel, there are a lot of visual nods and certain scenes echo those that have come before but it isn’t the type of film that feels like it is designed to hand the story off to the next generation. It is just telling a story from thirty years later.

What are some of your favourite/least favourite sequels? Is there any old property you would actually like to see bought back? God only knows that no one was asking for a Blade Runner sequel and that turned out well...

Am I just a sequel too? Eh, as long as I'm 'Break-in' 2: Electric Boogaloo' I'm okay with it.